


when i'm ready

by Shhhhh (Lara_03)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Afterlife, But its not awful and also, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Major character death - Freeform, Post-Mockingjay, because this is Hunger Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 00:50:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20249422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lara_03/pseuds/Shhhhh
Summary: “It’s okay.” She tells him, voice weary but fierce. “I’m ready now.”And she is.She has lived long, and suffered much, but also enjoyed far more than has been afforded to others.Through the carpeted floor of her bedroom she can hear the sounds of her grandchildren, and great grandchildren, laughing and playing. Her daughter has come to stand in the doorway of her room and is smiling, though there are tears in her eyes.Katniss is warm, and full, and surrounded by her family.*Katniss dies when she is ready and her family is there to greet her on the other side.





	when i'm ready

Her bones are old now. Frail and brittle, like fallen branches waiting to be crushed under a misplaced boot.

She’s found, with age, her whole body has come to ache. Her skin worn thin with time rather than hunger, her muscles slack from disuse, her joints stiff from the years of abuse and malnourishment they’d endured in her youth.

She has also found that these pains, all the tiny and seemingly endless aches, are but a small price to pay for the years she has taken in return. And, in comparison to what she has suffered before, these pains are not so bad.

She thinks of fire, and burning, and scorched human flesh.

No, she thinks. Not so bad at all.

Her grey hair lays in a halo around her, the strands either flowing in thick waves over her shoulders and down to rest atop her thick quilt, or tugging awkwardly from where they are trapped between her body and her bed. Even recently brushed as it is, curtesy of her granddaughter, the ends have begun to curl and knot, free as they are of any braid that would even temporarily tame their unruliness.

Her hair is much like her in that way. Hard to tame and never that way for long. Peeta had understood that about her. From the very beginning to the final end he had seen she was not made to be kept, but to be free, and tangled, and cherished.

The thought brings a small smile to her wrinkled face.

Her lungs crackle on an inhale, the breath sending sharp pinpricks of pain down her limbs.

This pain too, she thinks, is not so bad.

She rolls to one side, her joints crackling and popping with every movement, and allows her head to rest with a pillow cushioning her cheek. She waits, air catching in her chest and her throat, before reaching out to grasp the book that rests upon her nightstand. Her hand smooths over the cover, the bound leather worn supple while the pages had grown delicate.

The book, though not fragile for all the care they have taken with it, has been frayed by the same thing that now plagues her own body. Time.

She breathes in the familiar scent of cinnamon and dill, forest and damp earth, that still permeates its papers. Allows it to cocoon her in its warmth before she dares to open the first page.

Even now, she is taken by the realism of the drawing there. The similarties of the drawn face to that in the photo opposite. If not for how Katniss had always been so sure to tuck Prim’s tail in around camera’s, she’d be sure both images were prints.

“Oh, little duck.” She breathes, and then wheezes, choking on liquid lungs while her fingers smooth over lines left by Peeta’s pencil.

It takes her a while to notice that her cheeks are wet, the moisture not really registering until a tear rolls from her face and onto the pages. Joining the many that have fallen there before.

She thinks it must be years, since she has last cried for her sweet little sister, but it feels right to do so now.

She turns past several pages, eyes skimming over the details of Prim’s smile, the special tone she had used to talk to her goat Lady, the exact shade of wildflowers she’d preferred. All of the small things, committed to page and therefore memory. Finally, she reaches the pages they had made for Finnick.

To begin with, the picture they’d chosen was from the quarter quell. And then, soon after, it had been replaced with a photo taken by the rebellion. But neither image had ever felt right. Not to her, or to Peeta, or probably to anyone who’d had the chance to truly know him.

He was not a dashing young victor who would give anyone pretty enough, or rich enough his evenings. Nor was he a collector of secrets, biding his time until they could be unleashed in way that would cause maximum damage.

No. Finnick had been none of the things those pictures had made him out to be.

There is a small painting on his page now, a half page replica of a full canvas watercolour that currently resides in a family home in district 4. It shows a young boy, his auburn hair swept wildly about by a sea breeze, green eyes sparkling with the simple joy of being alive, a bright, true smile upon his face that makes his cheeks dimple.

One would be forgiven for thinking that the grin is directed at them, the viewer. But even in painted form, it is obvious to her who the grin had really been intended for.

Annie had been buried holding the only remaining copy remaining of a photo she’d taken many years ago, in a completely different time. A photo Peeta had used to create both the painting in the book and the one on canvas.

Finnick’s love for her, immortalised in the printed ink of the photo, had been taken with her. From cradle to grave, as the old saying goes.

After Finnick comes Rue.

Rue, who she had buried in flowers and remembered, always, with a throb of guilt and regret. Whom she had sung to death while her killer drowned in his own blood mere metres away, Katniss’ arrow still grasped tightly in his bloody hand.

Peeta had wanted to draw her like that, buried in flowers. Beautiful and gentle, even in death. Katniss had not been able to bare the thought.

They would remember her as she had been, she’d said. As the sweet girl who had sung with the mockingjays of her home’s orchards, who had told weary workers when it was time to go home, who had shared what little food she had with her little brothers and sisters despite the danger it wrought. Not as the girl made martyr by a world too cruel for her to inhabit.

Besides, Katniss could not picture those flowers without also picturing the spear that had still lain lodged in Rue’s tiny body.

Her throat goes tight, a wet sob swelling there, but she does not break. Not as she once would have.

There is a letter to, folded carefully into Rue’s pages, its corners withered and curled from years of reading and re-reading, marked with the seal of district 11.

It had arrived years after the war, when the world had just finished rebuilding and its inhabitants had just started learning how to do more than simply survive. Though their mother had perished, Rue’s father and three of her siblings had survived.

The child who had become her friend in the arena, a place where such bonds were a death sentence, was long gone. But her family somehow lived on and remembered.

The first letter had been little more than a thank you. One she still did not see herself as deserving, but from which an odd friendship had begun to form. Forged in ink, and grief, and yellow.

The flourishing lives of people who’d finally begun to thrive in a world much kinder than the one that had taken their sister, their daughter, mapped out in drops of ink and memories. The lives of people in a world where innocence was rewarded rather than punished.

In a photo album, somewhere, she smiles next to three grinning faces. It is hard to tell all four of them had been crying only moments beforehand.

On the next dozen pages are the children who had died in her and Peeta’s first games. Names and faces taken alternately from memory and nightmare and, on rare occasions, videos. Fleshed out with small details often gleaned from unlikely sources.

Her and Peeta had cried once, for over an hour, when they had learned Clove’s favourite colour was purple, for the pansy’s that had once grown outside her house. Cruel, vicious Clove, who was as sharp as her knives and who would have murdered Katniss without a second thought. Clove, who’d been younger than them both and who had a family she would never go back to. Clove, who favoured the colour purple.

22 children had died scared, and hungry, and in pain, during their games. 22 children fallen in a game designed to have no real winner.

Haymitch had added the names and pictures of the first two kids he’d mentored in the pages after the dead of their games. A seam girl and a town boy who had not lasted past the first day.

Eventually, he had also worked up the courage to add Maysilee Donner.

And then there is a list.

One that takes up far more paper than it ever should have been allowed to. A list of the other 1700 names that belong to children who’d died scared, and hungry; in pain and playing a game they had never asked to be part of.

In total there are 1800 tributes names within these pages, and so few of them died for a cause they truly believed in.

After that is Peeta’s father, with his kind eyes and warm smile. A man who had loved his son a great deal, but never enough to stop his own wife from beating a child for burning bread.

Katniss had a lot to thank the man for, the cookies, his overly generous trades, Peeta. And for a while that had been enough for her to assume the baker had no idea how his wife treated her youngest, for he must have been the kind of man who would have stopped it had he known. But she had come to realise the world was not so simple.

Kind though he may have been, Peeta’s father had sat by and let cruelties happen, like so many others had before him. And even after years of thought and several long conversations, neither she nor Peeta had ever decided quite how they felt about that. The conversations often led to places that hit far too close to home.

Peeta had added his brothers as well, drawn them in full colour. Both named for bread and possessing the same blue eyes and blonde hair as Peeta and any number of town kids. All gone now.

His mother had only featured in the long list of names belonging to those killed in the fire-bombings. They had no need to discuss why.

Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter who had given name to a rebellion before it had even truly begun, who had been her friend when she hadn’t fully understood the importance of the word. Madge Undersee, who has a much smaller entry than she deserves.

Katniss had not made enough of an effort to know her when she could, and by the time she had it was far too little far too late. Nearly everyone who could have offered more information about her had been killed at the same time she was.

She sometimes wondered, when the lighter bouts of melancholy hit, the ones that left her hollow with her losses and filled with a sense of unrelenting futility, whether people would remember Madge’s name in a hundred, or even fifty years.

Her hand is just smoothing over a sketch of her mockingjay pin when a knock sounds from the doorway.

She smiles, closes the book, and calls “Come in!” as loud as she can. The words are breathy and hoarse.

Her son gently pushes the door open, peeking through the doorway slightly before fully entering the room. She takes a while to admire him, the way he is a perfect blend of her and Peeta. The way he has been able to grow into a man without ever having to fight for his right to live.

“Hi mom.” He whispers in the soft voice people reserve for the weak and dying. “How are you?”

“Old.” Katniss whispers back. It earns her a soft chuckle.

“I bought you a mug of mint tea.” Her eyes flick to his hands to see they are indeed cradling a steaming ceramic cup of the familiar smelling liquid.

“Thank you.” She responds, “Just put it on the side, would you?”

“Okay.”

He sits perched on the edge of her bed when he has placed the cup down, still and silent for a second, and then-

“Mom.” His voice cracks and she takes his hand her own, gripping it with all the strength left in her body.

“It’s okay.” She tells him, voice weary but fierce. “I’m ready now.”

And she is.

She has lived long, and suffered much, but also enjoyed far more than has been afforded to others.

Through the carpeted floor of her bedroom she can hear the sounds of her grandchildren, and great grandchildren, laughing and playing. Her daughter has come to stand in the doorway of her room and is smiling, though there are tears in her eyes.

She is warm, and full, and surrounded by her family.

“Come here, sit with me.” She tells her, and her daughter does, gently taking her unoccupied. “I am going to die, here in my home, with the people who love me most nearby. I am not hungry, or cold, or in pain, and when I am gone there will be people left to make sure you never are either. It’s time. I’m ready to go now.”

And her daughter, ever strong, just like her, nods her head and grips her hand just that much tighter.

“I know Mom. I love you.”

Katniss smiles one final time.

“I love you too.”

And then she lets go.

* * *

It’s so peaceful when it happens, so slow and gentle that she hardly even notices at first. Until she looks down to see that her hands are no longer pale and wrinkled, but sun stained and calloused, just as they had been in her youth.

The world around her has turned the burnt orange of Peeta’s favourite sunsets, though this makes no sense since it had already been the twilight of late evening only moments ago. For some reason, the change does not panic her.

She pushes away her heavy down quilt and stands on legs that feel supple and strong, rather than weak, brittle and about as ready to break as dead branches. She finds she does not need a steadying hand, and no one reaches out to offer one because the room is empty.

“Katniss.” A voice calls to her from the doorway.

She is not sure who she was expecting would greet her when she finally passed, or whether she was really expecting anything to come after at all, but when she sees him, she realises it could never have been anyone else.

“Haymitch.” She breathes, and her voice is young again as well.

“Hi sweetheart.” He too has shed his years, standing before her looking as young as he had been when he’d won his games. Yet his cocky, lopsided smirk, is just the same as it had been the day he’d died.

“Where am I?”

It’s a stupid question to ask, one that has an obvious answer, but she feels the need to voice it anyway. As if it will all only be real when she hears someone else say it.

“I think you know.” Haymitch tells her, tone precise and measured in a way he rarely cares to make it. As if she is a vase about to topple from a precarious position on a counter top.

She nods, swallows heavily, and says, “Yes, but I need to hear you say it.”

He sighs, does as she’s asked.

“Your dead.”

An odd noise releases itself from her throat, a whistling sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

“I’m dead.” She can’t help it, she giggles. “I’m dead, and I was ready for it. I died of old age.”

She is fully laughing now, her stomach convulsing with the swells of hiccupping amusement, and she would seem hysteric to anyone else, but this is Haymitch, the man who understands her best.

He lets out his own chuckle. “Yes sweetheart, you really made it.”

“Not that it’s a competition, but I made it six years longer than you.” She gets out, and suddenly Haymitch is properly laughing too.

“Of course you did.” He grips the door frame to keep himself standing, “Had to show us all up and make it past 80.”

“Couldn’t do anything less after you made it to 70 odd with half a working liver, could I?”

“No.” He lets out a final laugh that’s suspiciously high pitched in nature. “You absolutely could not.”

We stare at each other for a while, seam grey eyes on seam grey eyes, ducking and snorting at every twitch of the others brow until the urge to laugh finally subsides.

“Are they all here?” She asks, clumsy words that could mean anyone or anything.

“Yeh. They’re all here. They’ll be happy to see you.”

And bless him, for somehow, as always, knowing exactly what she means.

“We should go see them then.” She tells him, taking a step towards him, trying to appear far more confident than she feels.

“So we should.” He agrees, offering her the crook of his elbow.

She sends a jab to the ribs as she does, but takes his arm all the same.

They step out of the door and into a meadow.

It should be jarring, to one second be on the second story of her house and the next be outside in a place she’s never seen before. Yet it makes sense to her in a way she can’t quite explain.

The meadow is dotted with flowers of every size, colour and shape imaginable, the grass beneath her bare feet a thick, lush carpet of vibrant green. Just beyond it is a line of trees, pine, and oak, and maple, plus any number of other varieties; all twisted together to form an inviting forest, bursting with the promise of life and sustenance.

Turning her head, she finds that behind her now lies a cobbled road lined with houses of brick, and wood, and stone. A mishmash of architecture that shouldn’t work but still does. In the distance there is a square filled with stalls, bustling with trade and people, the noise of their conversations reaches her even at the edge of the meadow. They sound happy.

“You done gaping Sweetheart?” Haymitch drawls, breaking the moment.

She tugs her arms from his, feeling a scowl settle onto her features.

“It’s the _afterlife._” She hisses at him.

“You get used to it.” He shrugs.

He takes off down the street towards the busy square while she’s still sputtering at his back.

“You coming or what?” Haymitch calls to her over his shoulder. She jogs to catch up.

As they walk, she asks him a million question about where they are, how they’re there, whose here, why they’re here, how big this place is, whether there’s food. It quickly become apparent he has little more clue than her in most cases, but has come to accept this fact.

She’s just about decided she’ll have to seek out the answers herself, not content with the not knowing, when they come across her. Her blonde hair braided back, blue eyes lit up in a smile, and wearing a light green blouse that has become untucked in the back.

“Prim!” She screams, heart heaving and eyes going cloudy. Her feet carry her forward with no instruction from her brain.

“Katniss!” Her sister calls back.

They meet in the middle.

A collision of limbs that wrap, and squeeze, and fumble until they are both in a snotty pile on the floor. Smiling and crying.

“It’s you, it’s really you.” She whispers, frantic, thumbs wiping tears from beneath Prim’s eyes.

“It’s really me.” Her sister assures her with a wet smile.

“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

They sit like that for a long time, holding each other tightly and whispering words of comfort. She’s vaguely aware that people pass them by, that Haymitch stands just off to one side, but it doesn’t feel like any of it matters. Her sister is back in her arms.

When they finally stand, helping each other balance, she feels like a wrung-out cloth.

“You’re taller now.” Katniss accuses.

“Yeh, I grew.” Prim retorts cheekily. “Haven’t you noticed everyone around here’s about the same age? Even those of us who didn’t make it that far.”

Prim didn’t mean it to, but the last sentence hits Katniss like an arrow in the chest. Her face falls instantly.

“I’m so sorry Prim. I’m so, so sorry.” Her voice shakes.

A frown of confusion comes over her sister’s face, like she doesn’t quite understand what she’s saying, but then the realisation dawns on her and her expression morphs into one of deadly seriousness.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Prim begins.

“I know, but if I’d-“

“No. No if’s or but’s. It wasn’t your fault.” Her tone has hardened with a steely resolve she’s only ever used on Katniss once before. On that fateful reaping day, when she’d made her promise to try, to try and win, for her.

“Okay.” She replies softly.

“Say it. Say it wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” She parrots dutifully.

“Good. Now, there’s some people who’ll want to see you.” Her sister grins and grabs her hand, rushing ahead and dragging Katniss along besides her.

She looks helplessly to Haymitch, who is ambling along just behind, and receives only an amused shake of the head. He’s a useless mentor sometimes.

Prims pulls her to a stop outside a medium sized log house with a great oak door. Its windowsills are planted with small yellow flowers, dainty limonium’s, and bell like snow drops. Green vines curl around the structure so that it appears to be sprouting from the earth.

Her sister gives three short raps on the door and then steps down one place, so that Katniss finds herself all alone on the porch. She’s about to turn and ask what Prim’s doing when the door swings open.

Rue is older than she’d ever been allowed to reach in life, but Katniss recognises her instantly. For she is the spit of what her younger sisters had looked like in their late teens.

She is stood frozen on the edge of her doorstep, leant forward on her toes in a familiar pose, looking as if she were about to take flight. And then she is a burst of motion, rushing to wrap her arms around Katniss’ waist in a crushing embrace.

“You did it, you kept your promise. Prim and the others, they told me you had, and my father too, when he came. Thank you.” Katniss can hardly breathe with it, the emotions locking vice like around her throat.

“You don’t have to thank me. There’s nothing to thank me for.” She chokes out.

“Yes, there is. You won, and you stopped the games, and you kept my siblings fed.” Rue insists, stepping back from her.

“Not all of them.”

“No, but you did all you could and it was more than enough.”

Katniss gives a small smile that Rue returns with a bright grin, before she pokes her in the stomach.

“So, you and Peeta huh? Not so much of an act as you thought?” Rue teases.

“Oh, button it. I had no idea.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Rue sends her a wink, which Katniss can only respond to by ruffling the girl’s hair. It earns her a small laugh.

“This is all very touching,” Interrupts Haymitch, “but you’re a popular girl and news spreads fast around here, so better get moving.”

She shoots the man daggers but allows Rue to push her out the door.

“I’m not going anywhere Katniss, so go see the rest of your adoring fans. I’ll see you again soon.”

It makes her heart clench with remembered grief over what had happened last time they had agreed to meet later.

“Promise?” She asks.

“Promise.”

She allows Prim to grab her hand and pull her along once more, sending Rue a small wave as she goes.

“Is Peeta-“ She begins to ask.

“Your husband can wait Katniss, he only saw you a couple months ago.”

She lets out a huff, wanting to protest. It has been a long couple of months. But her sister is right, there are important people she hasn’t seen in much longer.

“Where’s Finnick?” Prims calls to Haymitch.

“With Annie.” He tells her with a grin.

Her sister rolls her eyes and lets out a put-upon sigh. “Well obviously, but you know that’s not what I meant.”

Haymitch drags it out for a few more seconds before finally relenting and telling them, “Last I saw he was at the market.”

“Good. I bet some of the others are there too.” Haymitch nods in agreement and Katniss refrains from asking which others. She has a feeling she wouldn’t receive a straight answer.

The market is teeming with life, people flitting from stall to stall, wooden tables all lined up, wares crowding their every surface. She finds it odd that the afterlife has trade, but she supposes it must keep things interesting

“Johanna!” Her sister calls, and Katniss whips her head around to see the spiky haired girl, her hair back to its natural shade of brown rather than the bright colours she’d died it in her old age.

She’d been gesticulating wildly with a ball of yarn, half-yelling at a woman who seems unbothered by her acerbic nature, or perhaps just used to it, but her head to, turns at the sound of Prim’s voice.

“Well if it isn’t the Mockingjay!” Johanna hollers across the market place, not waiting until she’s close enough that they can speak at a normal volume. “Finally decided to slum it and join us then?” Several heads turn in their direction.

“Would’ve held out a bit longer if I’d known you were going to be here!” She yells back, laughter in her voice.

Johanna only shakes her head before taking the last few steps it takes for them to meet and wrapping Katniss in a brief but warm hug.

“Had to go ahead and outlast us all didn’t ya brainless? Couldn’t just be the Mockingjay or ‘the girl on fire’, had to be the last of the victors too. Should be ashamed, hogging all the glory.”

“You’re right, I’m very sorry. Living a long life, how selfish of me. I’m truly awful.” Prim is watching their exchange with an odd look, and she guesses they deserve it. To anyone who hadn’t seen them interact before, the entire conversation would seem rather strange. Especially with them both pulling faces to hold back from laughing.

They break at the same time, guffawing and snorting unattractively as they hold each other up by clinging to shoulders. Prim’s confusion only grows at this, and she catches Haymitch giving a disappointed shake of the head out of the corner of her eye. He’d probably thought he’d gotten away from their antics when he’d died.

“Come on.” Johanna tells her, still breathless. “Annie and Finnick are just over this way.”

The pair had been watching them from a stall selling root vegetables of some description, leaning against the counter with arms slung around each other, amused smiles plastered to each of their faces. They both push off and make their way towards them at the sound of their names.

“Hey Katniss. Long time no see.” Finnick says. When he wraps his arms around her, she squeezes him tight.

“Oh, Finnick…” She breathes into his ear from where her head is tucked against his shoulder. “Your son, you never, I can’-“

The words catch in her throat.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry too. That I never got to meet him. But he still had Annie, and he never once had to put his name in a reaping ball. You managed to make my sacrifice _mean_ something.” He tells her softly.

“He’s so beautiful, smiles just like his father. He has kids of his own now too, one of them even has your dimples.”

“I know, Annie told me.” Finnick grins and releases her. “Your moms around somewhere too, I heard she helped a lot, in the beginning. When things were… well, bad for everyone really.”

“I know, she was always good at taking care of people. I never gave her enough credit for that.” Katniss admits.

“She understands why you didn’t, Katniss.” Annie assures. “Even before you properly reconciled, she understood why.”

She gives Annie a brief hug, stepping back and gripping her by the shoulders.

“You’re tanner now, how’d you manage that?” Katniss questions.

“I spent more time outside when I was younger, didn’t have a child to tidy up after you see.”

“Ahh, makes sense.” She replies. “Jobs never quite done when it come to tidying up after children.”

“Not that their fathers would know it.” Annie adds in jest, and they both laugh at Finnicks offended look.

“Speaking of fathers, where’s Pe-“

“Ha, called it. You fuckers have to pay up. I said it’d take her less than ten minutes to ask.” Johanna cuts in.

“Shut it Jo, no one took you up on that bet.” Finnick interjects.

Katniss casts betrayed a betrayed look in their direction.

“He’s my husband, of course I’d want to see him. Why the hell would you bet on that?”

“Don’t look at me.” Finnick defends. “I just said, no one took her up on it.”

“And the bet was on how quickly you’d want to see cinnamon buns, so calm down. No one’s judging, I mean I’d want to see that ass pretty fast too.”

“Careful Johanna, we might already be dead but I’m not completely sure she won’t still try and kill you anyway.” Katniss can’t help but gasp at Cinna’s familiar voice. “Besides, you should leave the betting to me. I hear mine have pay off fairly spectacularly.”

Johanna fakes a gag, but Katniss ignores her. Too focused on her old stylist to care.

“You made me the Mockingjay.” She starts, and then stops. Unsure what else to say. “I…Thank you, for everything.”

“I only made you look the part, the rest was all on you, girl on fire.” Cinna tells her, one dark hand coming to cup her cheek.

She takes his hand from where it rests and grips it tight between her own two for a second, holding his gaze.

“Thank you.” She asserts. Cinna smiles.

“You are so very welcome you wretched girl.” And then he hugs her to his chest, and it is strange, because he looks younger now, but comforting all the same. “Now let’s get you to that husband of yours.”

“Okay.”

Now that she really looks around, she notices there are other cobbled pathways radiating out from the market square. Their small party ventures down the one opposite of the one which she came up, and she tries to keep it all straight in her head, so she can navigate her way back to Rue’s later.

Space must work differently here, because it takes less than a minute for them to be standing in front of a perfect replica of her and Peeta’s home, though when she looks back it seems they have passed hundreds of houses. There’s even a patch of primroses planted outside.

The door swings open before she’s even fully raised her hand to knock.

It’s jarring. How he looks. As if not a day has touched him since the quarter quell, though it has been years and she had watched his bright golden hair turn to white. Only his blue eyes, as ever, are the same as when she last saw him.

“Hi.” The word is barely more than a whisper, and if the audience behind her hadn’t gone deathly silent she’s sure it would have been lost in the scant centimetres separating them.

“Hi.” He whispers back. And then they are kissing.

Hands clutching, toes curling. Her fingers buried in his hair, his drawing patterns at her waist. A hint of tongue, a hot press of lips on lips, just the _right amount _of pressure. Everything else fades away.

This is coming home.

“Oh, come on.” Johanna scoffs. “It’s literally only been two months.”

Neither of them lets go of the other, wrapped together as they are in this moment, but their lips do part.

“We were both over 80 Jo, you think we had the energy for this kind of fun?” Peeta throws at her.

“As if. I bet you two were at it like rabbits till the day you popped it.”

Someone, probably Haymitch, chokes on laughter as her cheeks flush.

“Shut up.” She asserts, though its half hearted at best and not nearly as convincing with her face cushioned against Peeta’s chest.

She can hear the sound of his heart and files that away to ponder upon later.

“I see you bought all our friends with you.” Peeta observes, planting a soft kiss on the crown of her head.

“They weren’t invited.” She mumbles petulantly.

Peeta, the traitor, laughs and then invites everyone in for tea, toast and jam. They, of course, accept. She really needs better friends.

She only manages to maintain the disgruntled act for a few seconds before she breaks, smiling right alongside them as she leads them into the house.

When she steps over the threshold to the kitchen though, she freezes.

There, at their familiar, battered and worn kitchen table, sits her father.

She is vaguely aware of her mother pottering about around the stove, looking impossibly young and maybe happier than Katniss has ever seen her, but she can’t seem to take he eyes off the young man before her.

His grey eyes and dark hair are hers, and so is his olive skin. Their noses curve slightly differently, but he has the same spray of freckles she does across his nose, the same cheekbones. She must have gotten her jawline from her mother’s side.

Looking at him, even though he looks the same age she now appears, she is suddenly 10 years old.

“Dad.” The single word wrenches itself from her, torn and desperate, as though saying it means life or death.

“Hey there little song bird, you’re all grown up.” Her father responds, his voice exactly the same as it had been the day he went off to the mines, never to return. That alone could have broken her, but it’s the use of her old nickname, one only he’d ever used, that shatters her to pieces.

She is sobbing before she’s even fully processed her own thoughts, let alone started to register feelings. Her grip on Peeta’s hand must be strong enough to leave bruises.

“Dad.” She tries again.

He knows, somehow, exactly what she’s asking for, and he walks towards her and pulls her against his body. Tucking her under his chin just as he had done in the woods, when it was so cold you could hardly feel your fingers, yet you couldn’t move lest the nearby game be frightened off.

He even smells the same as she remembers. Like coal dust, and rabbit meat, and the woods of district twelve. She sinks into it like it’s a soft blanket.

“I’m so proud of you.” She chokes, and heaves, and clutches tightly at his shirt. “So very, very proud. You’ve been braver than anyone I’ve ever known, and stronger too, and I’m so, so sorry you had to go through everything alone.”

She shakes her head against his chest, letting out a wet hiccupping protest, but her father just holds her tighter.

“When you were born, I took one look at your tiny little face, your big seam eyes, and I said to your mother, ‘this one, see, this one here, she’s a survivor, so we don’t have to worry about her cus’ she’s going to be just fine’. And you were, little bird. A fighter and a survivor, and when they told me what you’d done I was so afraid for you, but I’d also never been prouder.”

“I wasn’t brave dad.” She whispers, voice muffled against his chest. “I was so scared, the entire time. Every single second of it, all I could think about was how completely terrified I was.”

“And you did it all anyway.” He gently tugs her from her hiding place pressed against his shirt so she’s facing him when he tells her, “That’s what being brave is.”

She cries for a while after that, which is embarrassing in retrospect because all her friends and family are there, but at the time she really find it in her to care.

Eventually she realises she’s still holding Peeta’s hand, and when she’s all cried out, she tries to pull it from his, but he just pulls it back. Kissing the back of her hand and dragging her to sit on his lap as everyone crowds around their kitchen table.

Her mother smiles and serves them saucers of tea along with thick slices of toasted bread, spread with butter, or jam, or syrup. And they all laugh, and grin, and talk about the lives they lived and the lives they didn’t, and Katniss, for once, is thankful, completely and with no regrets, that things turned out exactly the way they did.

She had died surrounded by her family, and in death her family has found her once again.

Surrounded by these people, dead as they are, the whole world is coloured the yellow of a dandelion in early spring. A flower that had once meant life.


End file.
